An Inconsequential Murder (24 page)

“
I can’t think of anything for now,” said the Dean; then, after a pause he added: “I tried to keep from getting too involved is this whole thing. In fact, I wish I had never been involved at all.”

“
But you are, Dean Herrera, you are.” Lombardo got up, put his hat on, and without shaking hands said, “Good night, Dean Herrera.”

As Lombardo walked to the door, a man’s voice from the top floor asked, “Are you still down there, Filiberto?”

Part 5
: Day 7

Chapter
27: Bad News Is Good News

After Governor Sanchez
’ last attempt to send the case up to the Federal Prosecutor failed, Lombardo was informed that he was on the case yet again. The suspension order had gone nowhere, as Lombardo had predicted, so his boss reluctantly allowed him to go on with the investigation.

But the Director
was still very unhappy that Lombardo had not closed the case as quickly as he wished. He had repeatedly called Lombardo to ask him to hand in the final report.

So, Lombardo had spent two days writing his findings, collecting reports from the SEMEFO on their forensic studies, and generally filling the case folder with information. He had not filed a suspect profile report or asked for an arrest warrant, which was necessary before the Public Ministry could hand over an indictment to the judge assigned to the case.

Lombardo’s boss called him into his office and asked, “You’ve been working on this for nearly two weeks, so why haven’t you arrested anyone or charged somebody with the murder?”

“
Because I don’t know where they are.”

“
They
?” repeated the Director. “You think there’s more than one?”

“
Yes; in fact, I think there were three men involved.”

“
Well, who do you suspect and where do you think
they
are?”

“
Read my reports in the case file when I am done,” Lombardo said getting up.

“
Where are you going now?”

“
To visit one of the main men of the only organization that knows what’s really going on in this damned state.”

“
Yeah? Who’s that?”

“
A guy who’s in jail,” he answered.

When Lombardo left the
Investigations Department’s building, the sun was setting behind a feature in the mountains commonly known to the people of Monterrey as the “M.” There weren’t many things that he liked about this city but Lombardo had to admit that the sunsets were spectacular. “Unfortunately,” he’d tell people, “they owe their extravagant coloring to the smog and dust in the air.”

His eyes were tired from having gone over the forensic reports time and again, trying to find that bit of information, that connection between the facts that would make it all coalesce, come together into a whole, as if it were a photograph, slowly appearing under the action of the chemicals of reason.

What did he know? He knew that Victor had accidentally
died under interrogation. He had been interrogated out of town and had been dumped by the railroad tracks perhaps in a clumsy attempt to hide the reason for his abduction. The forensic evidence pointed to three men having been the abductors. And, he knew that Victor was helping the Dean to safeguard information and incriminating emails that named the members on both sides of a struggled to legalize drugs. It was obviously the anti-legalization faction who had sent the three thugs to coerce Victor into giving up the key that safeguarded the information, but, who had sent them and where were these three men now? If he didn’t answer those two questions, he’d never be able to nail the bastards.

It was no good going to
the Public Minister or to a judge with what he had; everyone, all the way up to the Governor, was trying to bury this case, so if there were any loose ends, it would be shelved. So he would have to solve it on his own, and hand the case over when it was so tight that they would have no choice but to issue warrants.

Then there was that other reason for solving this case—he had to find the murderers or else he would never be able to face the widow’s eyes again.

As he
went down to the garage, his cell phone dinged. The message said, “Your laundry is ready.” The message was from Casimiro.

It had been a long time since he had been eager to do anything swiftly or go anywhere in a hurry. Not wanting to fool around with his cranky old car, he asked one of the cruisers that were going on duty to get him to the laboratory where Casimiro worked as quickly as possible. He was even tempted to ask the driver to use the siren and lights but thought better of it.

The patrol car swerved into Fidel Velazquez Avenue and he settled back to look through the decrypted print out of the documents that were in the files they had found.

After David and the log manager had managed to decrypt the information, he had asked them to let him look at it alone. He told them that for their own safety, and for credible deniability in case someone asked them, they should be ignorant of what was in the file.

As Lombardo read the contents, he selected some of the most interesting documents for recording on a CD.

When he was done, he asked them to encrypt the files again, to make a copy of them on a CD and to have the copy delivered at the Investigations Department addressed to him. Then he told them to isolate the machine not only virtually but physically from the network, and to say nothing of his visit to anyone, although he was sure David would report to whoever he was working for.

As his patrol car
reached Hidalgo Avenue, he told the driver to go around to the back of the laboratory and drop him off in the street parallel to the Avenue. He didn’t think anyone was following him but he could not avoid his habit of being careful. When he got out of the car he told the driver not to wait for him. He would take a taxi when he was done.

He went in through the employees
’ entrance and after showing his badge to the private security cop that sat in the bulletproof booth, he went straight to where he knew he would find his friend hunched over some piece of equipment or other.

He rushed by the enclosed lab spaces in which young men and women, dressed in lab coats, surgical masks, and caps, moved about slowly, quietly from instrument to instrument as if following a soundless choreography.

He spotted his friend and tapped on the glass partition. His friend pointed to the partition’s door and when he came out, he nodded his head toward an office. After they sat down, Casimiro took out two unlabeled bottles of beer from a small refrigerator. “I made this at home,” he said as he opened the bottles. “It’s better than the piss they sell in stores.” Lombardo swirled the beer in his mouth a bit before swallowing. It was.

“
My tests are not complete,” said Casimiro, “because, as you can see we’re very busy and I have to do things discretely, in off hours, but I can tell you two things: the persons that smoked those cigarettes are not Mexican—most likely they are males, Anglo-Saxon—and one of them might be African-American.”

“
That’s it?” asked Lombardo.

“
That’s all I have had time for,” said the laboratory technician.

“
Three guys,” said Lombardo.

“
Yup, three guys,” repeated the lab technician.

Lombardo finished his beer. “This is damned good, Casimiro. You ought to give up the lab business and set up a brewery.”

“
One or the other of the big ones would have me shot or would ruin me before I got started. Remember what happened to the guy who started the ice cube business?”

An urba
n legend from the seventies says that the head of one of the huge corporations in Monterrey threatened the man who first came up with the idea of selling ice cubes at every gasoline station with bankruptcy if he didn’t sell the corporation the man’s ice cube business.

“
But,” the man reputedly protested, “you already have so much!”

“
Yes,” the corporation’s CEO reportedly responded, “and how do you think we got so big? We
always
want more!” The man sold the corporation his business.

“
Times have changed, Casimiro.” Lombardo said.

“
But not the way this city does business,” Casimiro rejoined.

Lombardo thanked his friend and left. He now had enough evidence to put somebody in jail for 40 years. More importantly, he now
had the evidence that proved the true motive for Victor’s murder. All he needed now were the three names and the faces to go along with them.

Remembering
he had told the policeman not to wait for him, he went down to the Avenue to look for a taxi. As he stood in the corner waiting for one, he called someone he knew in the telephone company.

“
Alicia? This is Captain Lombardo.”

“
Well, Captain; it’s been a long time.”

“
Yes, it has, Alicia. Look, I need the cell phone number of Don Armando Aréchiga Jáuregui.”

“
Who in the world is that?”

“
The warden of the State Penitentiary, of course! The name should be familiar to you, with the kind of boyfriends you’ve had.”

She laughed and said, “Just a minute, Captain.”

Chapter 2
8: Misery Does Acquaint Men

It wasn
’t as if Warden Armando Aréchiga had never received a request from an investigator asking to see a prisoner; but, since the request came from Captain Lombardo and the prisoner he wanted to see was the notorious underboss of the Gulf Cartel, the Warden was noticeably nervous and suspicious.

“
Listen, Warden Aréchiga,” said Lombardo when he had noticed that the Warden was waffling, “I could get a warrant but let’s save my time and avoid your embarrassment; you know, a little birdie told me that another little birdie was let out of his cage for a whole night a few days ago.”

“
Alright, alright, don’t overdo it; come on over,” he had said relenting.

Abelardo
Unzúntia Jimenez, known to his friends, underlings, and enemies as
El Tarasco
, because he was said to hail from the Tarascan culture in the State of Michoacán, had been languishing in the Nuevo León State Penitentiary for six months while the United State’s Attorney General and the Mexican Federal Prosecutor wrangled over his extradition.

Many years ago,
when Lombardo was wandering around Mexico, he had stopped in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán to spend the night. He had been a young man then and just out of the Army. After drinking a dozen beers, he had gotten into a drunken brawl and wound up in jail. He was put in the common cell where another prisoner had tried to take his shirt and shoes. Lombardo had defended himself, but would have wound up with a knife in his back if Unzúntia had not interfered and told the other prisoners to lay off.

Unzúntia had liked Lombardo’s spunk and invited him over to his “private” cell to have coffee. They had spent the night talking and drinking until Lombardo had fallen asleep. The next day, Unzúntia had invited him to join him in his “business efforts,” as he called them. Lombardo had politely declined but they had formed, if not a friendship, it was a mutual respect society because each man knew that the other was somebody to be reckoned with.

Through the years they had seen each other from their respective sides of the “fence,” exchanging nods of recognition, but knowing full well that if it ever came to a confrontation, although the outcome could not be predicted, it would surely be deadly.

Lomb
ardo had asked the warden to see Unzúntia in a private office. When El Tarasco came in, he smiled at Lombardo and said, “How come we only meet in jail?”

“
Because we are both such bad boys,” said Lombardo. “Do you want some coffee, Tarasco?”

El Tarasco stirred
the sugar in his coffee and then said, “How am I supposed to make a knife with this?” He threw the plastic spoon into the wastebasket. “Jails are not fun anymore,” he said.

For the first time in many days, Lombardo laughed.

“
It was no plastic spoon they were going to use on me that time in Pátzcuaro. It was a long time ago
but I still remember that you saved my ass, Tarasco.”

Unzúntia
laughed and said, “I did it because I admired your balls, Lombardo, and, besides, a murder in the cells would only cause a lot of trouble for everyone.”